LAS VEGAS, NV - SEPTEMBER 28: Vegas Golden Knights' radio broadcaster Dan D'Uva poses before the Knights take on the Colorado Avalanche for a preseason game at T-Mobile Arena on Sept. 28, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by David Becker/NHLI via Getty Images)(Photo: David Becker, NHLI via Getty Images)

Before midnight struck on hockey’s Cinderella — the Vegas Golden Knights, who eventually lost in June to the Washington Capitals in the 2018 Stanley Cup Final — Ridgewood’s Dan D’Uva was trying to figure out how he could make this broadcast different from all the others he had done in the Golden Knights’ magical first National Hockey League season.

As the voice of the NHL’s newest expansion team, D’Uva felt he had to make this broadcast special.

“I’m thinking, ‘What should I do to prepare for the Stanley Cup Final that I wouldn’t normally do?’” the Golden Knights' broadcaster said in an interview with The Record and NorthJersey.com. “I got some great advice — once upon a time — from Mike Emrick, who has been a great mentor for me. He told me many, many years ago, ‘Always hang on to your first tape.’”

LAS VEGAS, NV - JUNE 07: Nate Schmidt #88 of the Vegas Golden Knights is defended by Evgeny Kuznetsov #92 of the Washington Capitals during the second period in Game Five of the 2018 NHL Stanley Cup Final at T-Mobile Arena on June 7, 2018 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Capitals defeated the Golden Knights 4-3.(Photo: Harry How, Getty Images)

The first tape happened to be D’Uva broadcasting a high school hockey playoff game in the spring of 2000, when he was a freshman at Ridgewood High School. The Maroons, the 14-seed, knocked off Montclair, the three-seed, with a shorthanded goal in overtime.

“So I popped in that micro-cassette tape — it still works — and thought, ‘Gee, if you could have told this 14-year-old kid that he would be broadcasting the Stanley Cup Final for a team in Las Vegas, he’d be pretty pumped,’” D’Uva said. “He might not believe you, but he’d be pretty pumped.”

D’Uva is still just as pumped. The former New Jersey Devils’ minor league broadcaster who has longed eyed a spot in an NHL booth now has that spot thanks, in part, to his roots in New Jersey when he spent his nights listening to legendary Stanley Cup play-by-play man Doc Emrick.

The Ridgewood alum couldn’t help but look back on where this journey all began. It started at the Meadowlands, the same place it started for many New Jersey hockey fans. D’Uva caught on to the Devils in the 1990s. He was crushed when they lost to the Rangers in 1994 and became a true diehard when they won the Stanley Cup the following year.

D’Uva and his old Ridgewood High School friend and broadcast partner, Guy Benson, now a Fox News commentator, created RHS-TV. Seeking advice, the duo boldly went up to Emrick and Chico Resch and introduced themselves.

They brought along micro-cassette recordings of themselves calling high school action and presented them to Emrick and Resch. D’Uva jokes that they were nice enough not to tell them to go away. They were even nicer in listening to those tapes. Emrick would take the tapes and get back to him with critique in the offseason.

Listening to D’Uva, his timing and pacing are similar to Emrick’s style. It’s immediately recognizable in just a casual conversation. This could come from the close relationship the two developed when D’Uva was in college at Syracuse and later at Fordham, or because of all those nights D’Uva spent growing up listening to Emrick
call Devils games.

“It was a kid wanting to connect with a famous broadcaster like Mike Emrick, to a friendship,” D’Uva recalls.

The Devils credentialed him while he was a student broadcaster at Fordham’s WFUV. Eventually, he moved on to broadcasting the Trenton Devils of the ECHL and the Syracuse Crunch, then a Devils’ affiliate, of the AHL.

There were other stops along the way. He helped get Cape Cod Baseball League games broadcast and still returns to work with aspiring baseball broadcasters each summer. He juggled Syracuse Crunch duties with a role as an adjunct professor at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications.

And like any other broadcaster, there were various games in other sports he was in the booth for — it just depended on who called and when.

Emrick never told him he put in calls, and he never asked Emrick to put in those calls, but D’Uva always knew his mentor had lobbied for him.

Emrick put in one key call with D’Uva to give him advice for the Trenton Devils gig. “When I got a phone call for the interview with the Trenton Devils, I told Doc [in an email], ‘Hey, I wanted to let you know I’m going down for an interview. I wanted to let you know first. I’ll let you know how it goes,’” recalls D’Uva. “Five minutes after he got that email he called me, and I’m going, ‘Oh my god, Mike Emrick is calling me, this is critical.’

“When I answered he told me, ‘When you go for the interview, don’t tell them what you’ve done and how much experience you have. They already know that or else they wouldn’t have called. When you go for the interview, show them how hard you’ll work for the organization.’”

D’Uva’s influences extend past Emrick and past the Hudson. CBS broadcaster Ian Eagle is a longtime friend. He remembers listening to Marty Glickman as a kid. D’Uva counts longtime play-by-play announcers Howie Rose and Gary Cohen as two voices who were hugely influential for him. He still loves Howie’s end-of-game catchphrase “Put it in the books” and admires the way Cohen deftly handles Keith Hernandez’s idiosyncrasies and Ron Darling’s passionate analysis in the SNY booth.

D’Uva, a lifelong Mets and Jets fan, realized early on that fans still tune in during a losing season because the broadcasters are the one constant, win or lose. Players come and go, coaches and managers never last forever — especially with his favorite teams — but the broadcasters bring a comfortable familiarity that fans identify with in good seasons and bad.

D’Uva’s current franchise might be starting out on a historically successful note but every sports fan knows that hard times are inevitable. Thanks to Doc Emrick, Howie Rose, Gary Cohen, Marty Glickman and all of those other voices who helped shape him during his youth in Bergen County, D’Uva strives to become the same: An identifiable voice you never forget, there for the fans through good and bad.

CLOSE

The Hockey Hall of Fame announced Martin Brodeur as a member of the 2018 class Tuesday.
Abbey Mastracco, Staff Writer, @AbbeyMastracco